5 Free Tools And Platforms To Get Your Start-up Rocking

Like most, your work life is probably filled with electronic clutter, from a myriad of apps and their accompanying login details, to complex spreadsheets and bulging inboxes.

Well, we are here to help you clear through that clutter.

Below is a list of tools that will allow you and your company to dispense with unnecessary processes and increase the overall speed and quality of your work.

Here are 5 Free Tools & Platforms That Will Clean Up Your Day…

Grammarly

Want to avoid drawing the ire of the grammar police whilst ensuring that all your documents, posts, emails and proposals are clean, crisp, clear, and just plain correct? Well, then, Grammarly is the tool for you.

The Grammarly add-on monitors almost everything that you write online and makes sure that no spelling errors or grammatical mistakes go unnoticed before you hit send, post or publish. Grammarly will also provide you with regular reports on your performance and accuracy, as well as percentage scores that you can try to beat next time out.

We all have little bad habits when it comes to writing, but with Grammarly, nobody needs to find out that you don’t know a comma from a coma. You will be as precise and proper as an Oxford English professor every single time.

Grammarly is available as a free add-on for most browsers.

CharlieHR

The HR in CharlieHR obviously stands for Human Resources, but it could so easily stand for ‘Headache Relief.’

It is so oft the case that brilliance lies in sublime simplicity, and CharlieHR is another example of that. Among other things, this easy-to-use tool eliminates the need for the tangled, cluttered, and convoluted spreadsheets that companies typically rely on to track annual leave, replacing them with a system that will save everybody time, energy and frustration.

When an employee requests leave through CharlieHR, his/her employer is informed of the request and the number of holidays the employee has remaining, as well as any potential date conflicts. If the request is granted, it is displayed on a calendar that all the other employees can access. The tool also allows companies to track birthdays and other anniversaries.

So simple you think you are missing something, right? Well, you’re not.

At present, CharlieHR is free for up to nine users, after that, we’re afraid, you will have to pony up some dough.

LastPass

These days, most of us can barely support the weight of our own heads with all the passwords we are carrying around in our brains, and those are just the ones we can remember. Thankfully, LastPass can take that weight off your shoulders.

LastPass allows you to create a single ‘Master Password’, meaning that you can log into all your accounts at once from any of your devices and manage them from a secure, encrypted ‘vault.’ No longer will you have to waste your precious time inserting login details ad nauseum or taking part in frustrating password-reset processes, you will just type in one password and get on with your work.

What’s more, despite having only one password to remember, using LastPass actually improves your online security. The tool can help you identify the weak passwords being used on any of your individual accounts and generate more secure replacements. Your LastPass account itself is protected by “multifactor authentication” and your ‘Master Password’ cannot be seen by anyone, not even LastPass employees or servers.

Although there is also a premium version, the LastPass add-on is free for individuals on a variety of browsers. For business accounts, however, there is a fee.

Proposify

The people behind Proposify want to make you a closer. You know, a closer - the kind of person who closes big deals, gives demonstrative high fives, and makes pistol gestures with his/her fingers before blowing away imaginary gun-smoke.

And you want to be that kind of person too, don’t you?

Proposify certainly makes the road to closing a great deal smoother. The software provides customizable templates that make it much simpler to produce aesthetically pleasing, easily digestible, and professional proposals. Another interesting and exciting feature is the content library, which you can peruse for materials from previous company proposals that might be relevant to your current project. Most importantly, Proposify allows the client to give their approval with an electronic signature feature, speeding the whole process along.

Although Proposify is only available for free on a 14-day trial basis, it’s just so good that we felt it had to be included in this list.

Asana

There are a host of fantastic task and project management tools out there, such as Trello and Wrike, but Asana is the one that gives you the most bang for no bucks.

The basic version of Asana is free for up to 15 users and allows teams to work on an unlimited number of tasks and projects. The tool is easy to use, but also extremely comprehensive, allowing you to plan every task in great detail. The app also lets you to drop in files from other apps and programs when necessary, and you can even communicate directly with other team members via an onboard messaging service.

The recent launch of the Asana for Slack integration also means that you can link Asana tasks to Slack channels and even take action on these tasks through the Slack app.

Asana brings everything you need together in one place and can help your team become a far more efficient, cohesive unit.

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